


Once More, With Feeling

by itainthardtryin



Category: Glee
Genre: Dani is only in this fic for the purposes of breaking up with, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-16 07:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1336984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itainthardtryin/pseuds/itainthardtryin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One kiss can change everything. (Santana POV, starting from the kiss scene in '100')</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Relapse

“...and dating.”

As soon as the words leave your mouth, you try to act like it didn’t take every ounce of courage you have to say them. You don’t want her to date, unless she’s dating you. The thought of her with someone else kills you. You wonder if you dating Dani has the same effect on her, but you don’t have long to think about Dani before you see Brittany looking at you in a way you know too well. You know this look, you’ve seen it in bed, in janitors closets, in bathrooms at clubs you were too young to even be in. You don’t even have time to prepare before her lips meet yours. Your senses go into overdrive as you feel her hand on your cheek, her thumb gently stroking down your jaw.

It takes half a second for you to kiss her back. It’s natural, it’s home. You can’t fight it. It’s what you were born to do. Brittany briefly pulls back to get a better angle so she can kiss you deeper, and that’s when reality comes flooding back. You remember Dani, you remember the break up, you remember the nights you’ve spent with a bottle of wine looking through Brittany’s Facebook wondering if you’ll ever be in a picture with her again. So you pull away. You don’t want to do it, but you have to.

“Okay, okay,” you say, buying yourself some time to actually form coherent speech. “It’s a bad idea.” You leave out the rest. _It’s a bad idea, I have to break up with Dani first. It’s a bad idea, we could get caught. It’s a bad idea, please be sure this is what you really want. I can’t go through this again._

“It feels really good to be around you,” Brittany says. “You make me feel like a girl again. Like my body wakes up.” You can feel yourself slipping back into this so easily. It feels like you’ve never been away. Like Brittany hasn’t been in MIT for months and you haven’t been in New York pretending you’re happy with another girl.

“Please don’t do this, okay?” you ask. You love Brittany, you always will. But you can’t kiss her and just be friends. You need to be in a relationship with her or you need to be just friends. You can’t blur the lines. “I have worked my ass off to get over you.” It’s the truth. You’ve tried dating - you slept around when you got to New York, you took girls on dates, you’ve tried being in a relationship. You’ve tried getting rid of stuff that reminds you of her in your apartment. You’ve _tried_. But you leave out the part about how you haven’t succeeded. Not even close.

Brittany gets up, you think she’s going to walk away. That she’s grown tired of playing these games. But then.

“I really wanna be with you, Santana.” You aren’t even sure if you heard her correctly or if you’re just imagining things. “I’ve seen the world, and I’m sure now more than ever that I belong with you,” Brittany says, and _fuck_. This is everything you’ve wanted to hear since you stupidly broke up with her.

“And I’m sure your girlfriend’s great…” Your girlfriend. It should make you feel awful that you’re sitting here with the love of your life, having just kissed her, listening to these words, because you have a girlfriend. But you don’t. That’s how you know that what you feel for Brittany is what you heart really wants. “...but you can’t recreate what you and I have.” Brittany tells you, and she’s right. There’s no-one else in this world you could imagine having this sort of relationship with, this level of understanding. You get each other, you click, you’re meant to be.

You still haven’t spoken, but Brittany’s leaning forward and leaning in and you think she’s going in for another kiss, when she moves to your cheek. She makes sure to get right in so you can feel her breath on your skin. “It’s your choice,” she whispers, and the tone of it sends shivers down your spine. You’re sure if you were standing up, you’d have felt your legs start to shake. You look at her, and she looks back, leaving the decision up to you. “If you want me, I’m here,” she says, as she walks away.

You watch her leave until she’s completely out of your sight, and then let out a sigh. You’re going to have to break up with Dani.


	2. Rectify

You don’t see Brittany again before you go back to New York. She texts a few times to see how you are, and to talk about seeing everyone again, but she doesn’t flirt, doesn’t overstep any boundaries. She doesn’t push you for an answer either. Brittany knows that you won’t leave her waiting any longer than you need to. As soon as you take care of business, you’ll put her mind at ease. It’s this type of trust that makes you realise just how perfect Brittany is for you. How much you love her. 

The journey back to New York is going to be long. Everything keeps replaying in your mind and you still haven’t a clue what to say to Dani when you get back. All you know is that you want to keep it quick and to the point, there’s no point in dragging this out. 

You send a quick text to Britt before you get on the plane - tradition, really - to let her know you’re leaving Ohio. Just boarding now. I’ll see you soon, though. Tell the others I’ll miss them. It doesn’t say too much, or give her hope, but you’re telling her that you’re not going to be away from her long enough to miss her. (That’s even a lie to yourself, because you miss her already and it’s only been two days.)

Most of the flight is spent playing out scenes of your break up with Dani in your head. You don’t know how you want her to react. Hopefully well. You don’t want to hurt her. But then again, you think it might hurt if she takes it too well. You’ve been a couple for seven months now, and to you that’s a considerable amount of time. You hope you’ve come to mean something to her after that. 

The answer comes right away when you walk out of arrivals in JFK and see her standing there with a massive grin on her face. She’s come to surprise you and take you home. You try to put on a fake smile and act like you’re not about to make her world come crashing down. She runs over to you - actually runs (you didn’t know that people did that in real life) - and kisses you right there in the middle of the airport. You can feel how much love and passion she’s putting into it, but all you can think about is how her lips don’t taste like Brittany’s. How you don’t fit with her as well as you do with Brittany. How she’s too short, and you’re not on your tip toes like you are with Brittany. Brittany. Brittany. Brittany. 

“Hey babe,” Dani says, when she pulls back. The smile on her face makes her look like a kid on Christmas.

“Hey,” you reply. “You really didn’t have to come the whole way to the airport, y’know?” She takes your hand proudly and starts walking towards the train station to head back into the city.

“I know,” she says. “How was the glee club thing?” she asks, and it’s such a normal, innocent question. But all you can think about is Brittany kissing you, and dancing with her, and singing together and just... being with her. You try to think of anything else that happened. 

“It was great to see some of my friends again,” you tell her, honestly. “But it sucked that even that far away from New York, I was still forced to spend time with that midget, Berry.”

Dani screws up her face. “Bad?”

“Don’t worry, I set her straight. Not gonna let her get the better of me on our home ground.” 

“You guys are gonna have to make up eventually, y’know,” Dani tells you. “You’re her understudy. Babe, you can’t keep this high school thing going on forever. Let high school stay in high school.” You know she’s talking about Rachel, but you feel like she’s talk about Brittany. “You live in New York now. The greatest city on earth. You’ve moved on.” 

You can’t do this. You’re not even out of the airport yet, and you’re already freaking out. You pull your hand out of Dani’s, and she looks at you in confusion. “Babe, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” you lie. “I just… can we talk about something else?” 

She looks at you to try to find any clue as to what she’s said wrong. After a few seconds, she gives up as if she can’t find what she’s looking for. “Sure,” she says, her voice firm. “What do you want to talk about?”

You frantically try to think of a topic of conversation that will steer away from anything Brittany related. “You. Let’s talk about you,” you tell her. “What have you been up to these past five days?” It seems to do the trick, and she starts to tell you about meeting up with Elliot to practise and how she went to dinner with a friend who was visiting from out of town. You nod in the right places, and ask questions when you know you’re meant to, and she talks for most of the train ride back to the city with you directing the conversation away from yourself. 

//

It feels amazing to be back in the apartment, because no matter how difficult it was for you to admit it, New York is your home now. Dani follows you into your bedroom where you leave your suitcase and take off your jacket and boots. 

“I’ve got an idea,” Dani says, and you know by the tone of her voice where this is leading already. “How about you come over to my place later for a real homecoming.” She crawls onto the bed so she’s straddling you where you’re sitting, and leans into your ear. “If you catch my drift,” she teases. Her hand is on your leg, and you don’t like where it’s going. All you can think about is how Brittany didn’t touch you when she leant in to kiss your cheek. She could have, easily. You’ve missed her touch so much. You crave it. But she didn’t touch you, not after you told her it was a bad idea. She kept her hands on the chair beside you. At the time you thought Brittany was pushing the boundaries a little with her words, but now… now you can see how she was doing everything she could to stay within them. 

You’re snapped back into reality when Dani leans in to kiss you. You can see the lust in her eyes, and it makes you realise that this isn’t right. “Stop,” you tell her. She pauses. “I can’t do this.” She moves off your lap, and looks at you, waiting. 

“Why?” is all she says. 

“You’ve been telling me to move on, that I live in New York now, to leave high school behind. But I can’t,” you admit.

“What are you saying?”

“Being back there… in that school, it made me realise a lot of things. It made me realise that I’m not the person I was back then.” You say the next line in an almost whisper. “But it also made me realise that I’m still in love with the same person I was back then.”

You can see the realisation sink into Dani’s face. She starts blinking faster, you can see her swallow. She’s trying not to cry. “And me?” she says, her voice cracking. “Are you in love with me?”

She stares you right in the eye waiting for you to answer. You can see the tears starting to form because both of you know what you’re going to say. You shake your head. “No.” You aren’t even sure if that’s the truth. Maybe you could love her. Maybe you do love her. But it doesn’t even compare to a fraction of what you feel for Brittany.

The tears start to fall instantly from her eyes, and she chokes out a sob. “When you were…” she struggles. “When you were in Ohio, did you and her…?” She lets the question hang in the air. 

You take a deep breath. “We kissed.” 

You aren’t even shocked when Dani slaps you. “I thought we had something, Santana!” she half yells. “I thought you could have been the one.” 

“I’m sorry,” you say, and it doesn’t sound like enough for what you’re doing to her. “We could have been special,” you tell her, honestly. “If it weren’t for her. She’s the one. She’s it for me.”

“Please, stop,” Dani asks you. “I don’t want to hear any more.” She takes a minute to collect herself. “I’ll… I’ll come by tomorrow to pick up my stuff,” she informs you. She then looks at you, really looks at you, taking you in for the last time. “I just hope she’s worth it.”

Dani storms out of your apartment in tears, and you feel slightly bad that you have no urge to run after her and comfort her. You almost feel numb to everything that’s happening to you, everything in your world has become a blur since she kissed you in that choir room. You sit on the edge of your bed, absent-mindedly staring at the door that your now ex-girlfriend just made her way out of. It takes a few minutes until reality sinks in a little. 

You’re single. But not for long. 

Brittany’s going to be your girlfriend again.


	3. Ready

You’re kind of emotionally unstable right now - a lot has happened in the past few days - and all you really want to do is to have one night where you don’t have anyone to break up with, anyone to get back together with, or anyone to answer to. So, after Dani leaves your apartment, you take a shower, get dressed and head down two blocks to O’Connors, a little bar on the corner of the street. It’s usually quiet, and the alcohol is cheap, so it’s just what you need right now.

When you get inside, everyone’s head in the bar turns to look at you. They’re all middle aged men who clearly aren’t used to seeing a nineteen year old woman in a dress that barely covers her ass, but it doesn’t even phase you anymore. You’re used to turning heads. You make your way over to the bar and ignore their leering eyes. “Beer, please,” you ask the bartender, and he immediately starts pouring you a glass. He places it on the bar, you pay him and thank him and take it, making your way to a table in the corner where you can just sit in peace and quiet for a while. No-one will ever find you here.

Three or four beers later, you realise that this is not what you should be doing. You’re wasting time. You’re wasting hours and minutes and seconds that could be spent talking to Brittany, when you’ve already wasted a year. You down what you have left and make your way outside to head back home. It’s still the middle of the day, and you don’t know why that shocks you but it does. You expected it to be the middle of the night, for days to have gone by, but when you check your watch you’ve only been out for over an hour.

You feel slightly pathetic when you break into a brisk walk, trying to refrain from running, back to the apartment. It’s stupid, really. She’s not even there, and you don’t even know if she’ll be online when you get home. But it really does feel like you’re going home to her, in one form or another.

When you get home, you practically sprint over to your laptop. It takes longer than you want to load up, and all you can do is wait impatiently muttering “come on, come on!” under your breath. Eventually, it powers up and you open Skype.

Brittany’s offline.

You carry your laptop to your bedroom and climb up onto your bed, letting yourself sink back into the pillows and take a breath for a second. You grab your phone off the nightstand and send her a text that simply says Skype? As you put the phone back on the nightstand you lean back into your pillows realising you could be waiting all night for Brittany to come online. She could be out for dinner, she could be out with the Glee kids while they’re all still in Ohio, she could be packing for going back to MIT tomorrow. She could be anywhere.

But when you see her status change to ‘online’, you know she’s here with you. And that’s where she should always be.

* * *

 

It doesn’t even take Brittany ten seconds between signing on and calling you. It makes you smile that she’s so eager to talk to you. You briefly wonder if this is what your life would be like if you’d never broken up with her. Coming home to Skype with her every night. Would you even need to Skype with her? Or would she be by your side?

You don’t get time to finish your thought because Brittany’s smiling face is on your screen and you can’t help but smile back. It’s involuntary.

“Hey,” she says, shyly.

“Hey,” you reply. “You look happy.”

“I’m always happy to see you,” Brittany replies, and the simplicity of her statement makes your heart beat faster.

“Me too,” you tell her. “How’s Lima?”

“Not the same without you,” Brittany says. “I hung out with Tina last night, and she told me all about what’s been happening this year. It was nice.”

“Sounds good. It was kinda weird hanging out with everyone again though, wasn’t it? In the choir room.”

Brittany nods. “I guess it felt like going back to something we’d moved on from. Time travel or something,” she laughs.

“Maybe there are some things I don’t want to move on from,” you tell her, and you know this is it. You can’t avoid this any longer.

“Like what?” Brittany asks in a way that tells you she knows what you’re talking about.

“Like you,” you say. “I don’t want to move on from you.”

Brittany smiles and blushes slightly. “I thought you said you’d worked your ass off to get over me.” You swallow. “I did. God, Britt, I worked so hard. I tried everything I could. I tried being alone, I tried being with a different girl every night, I tried being with just one girl. I tried alcohol, I tried working every waking hour of every day. I worked my ass off, and no matter how hard I tried, I _couldn’t_ get over you.”

Brittany goes to say something, but you don’t let her.

“There’s nothing I can do that would ever help me get over you, and it’s taken me a year to realise that. And the reason I can’t get over you is because I don’t want to get over you. I tried to get over you because I thought it was what you wanted. That you wanted us to move on, and I tried so hard for you to do that. I dated Dani, I tried to look like I was moving on with my life but I wasn’t.”

“Santana…” Brittany says. “I never wanted us to move on.”

God, you wish you could touch her right now. You wish you could take her hand in hers, you wish you could touch her face, kiss her lips.

“I didn’t want us to move on either,” you admit.

You’re both silent for a few seconds. “So what does this mean for us?” Brittany asks.

“I broke up with Dani,” you tell her, and she gasps.

“Already?!”

“There was no point in waiting to do something I should have done months ago,” you tell her.

“Was she upset?” Brittany asks, genuinely concerned.

“She slapped me,” you half laugh. “And she was crying.”

“I’m sorry,” Brittany apologises. “I know it sounds dumb but I didn’t want anyone to get hurt because of me. All I wanted was you back.”

“I know, Britt.”

“So… Do you want to be with me again?” she asks you, and you’re wondering why she’s even asking.

“Britt, I love you.” You see the instant reaction those words get, how she relaxes. “I love you so much that some days I don’t even know how to cope with it. I want to be with you more than anything,” you tell her.“But-”

Brittany scoffs. “But.” She looks scared.

“It’s nothing bad, Britt. But before we do this again - properly this time - I want to make sure that we don’t have any unresolved issues. I want us to both get the past dealt with, any… any worries, insecurities we have. I want us to talk about them first, so they don’t come between us when we’re together. Is that okay?”

Brittany’s looking at you like you’re the most amazing thing she’s ever seen and you know she’s going to agree. “I’d like that, actually,” she says. “I think there are a few things I want to talk to you about that would be good to get out of my system first.”

It’s your turn to look scared. But Brittany reassures you. “Don’t worry, I’m not mad or angry or anything like that. I guess I just want to hear your side of things, understand how you feel, too. And I want to tell you how I feel. So we’re on a level playing field.”

“I want that, too.” You’re feeling more at home and more relaxed than you’ve felt in as long as you can remember. You think back to a time when you’d be terrified to talk about feelings, and now it’s all you want to do. You want to know what about you scares her, what worries her, what you do that makes her doubt you. You crave it, you need to know every little thing she feels because you’re terrified that if you don’t know you’re going to hurt her again. And you never, ever want to do that again.

“Can we talk about all of that tomorrow though? I’m heading back to MIT in the morning and I have to be up at like five, and I don’t really want to fall asleep on your mid conversation.”

You laugh. “Yeah, Britt. That’s fine. Just… promise me something. Promise me that when you get back to MIT you don’t lose who you are again. Can you hold on to what makes you, you?”

“I can try,” she tells you. “It felt good to have myself back again.”

“It felt good to see you happy again,” you admit. “All those numbers and equations, yeah, you might be a downright genius at them, but they don’t make you happy. Just… please remember what makes you happy.”

“How can I forget when she’s right there in front of me?” Brittany replies, and right there and then you promise yourself that you’ll keep doing whatever you can to make Brittany happy for the rest of your life.


	4. Reunited

It doesn't take you long to get to sleep that night. When you close your eyes all you see are visions of Brittany; past, present and future. You can see her at five years old playing with you in the sandbox, you see her at fifteen looking vulnerable and naked the first time you slept with her, you see her at twenty-five with a ring sitting perfectly on her finger. Each and every thought you have is of Brittany, and it soothes you and keeps you warm like a blanket. You fall asleep with ease, a smile on your face.

All your dreams are of Brittany, too, but you don't even realise you're dreaming until you're awoken from your sleep by something that is far too noisy for this time of night. When you come to your senses you realise it's coming from your apartment door, the metallic knocking ringing in your ears. It is persistent and loud, and you sigh to yourself as you pull back the blankets and get out of bed to open it.

"Kurt, for God sake what have I told you about leaving your key in the apartment when you go out!" you shout at him as you walk to the door. "How hard is it to just put the goddamn thing in yo-"

You stop talking mid sentence when you open the door to see Dani standing there in a state you've never, ever seen her before. She looks like she hasn't stopped crying since she left earlier, she's extremely drunk, and her clothes are dirty like she's fallen over more than once. Your first instinct is to get her in your apartment so the neighbours won't come out and complain. Your second instinct is to yell at her, but you're aware that it's the middle of the night so you keep your voice hushed.

"Dani, what the hell?" You look her up and down as she wobbles on the spot where she's just about standing.

She looks at you and shakes her head. "I loved you, no, I love you. I need you, babe. I can't-" She stops herself when she stumbles to the side, almost falling over. You rush to her side to hold her up, you don't want to have to deal with her injuring herself.

"Let's get you sitting down, huh?" you say, guiding her to the sofa. "Don't want you hurting yourself."

Dani laughs mirthlessly. "Bit late for me getting hurt, isn't it?"

You don't reply, just help her to the seat and make sure she sits down. "I'm going to get you a glass of water."

"Why are you acting like you still care?" she says, her speech slurring slightly. "You don't care about me. Or you wouldn't have done this."

You pour her a glass of water and bring it over to her, placing it in her hands. "I do," you tell her. "I do care about you. Trust me, I do. But, it's not fair on either of us to be in a relationship when I'm in love with someone else."

"Don't you dare talk to me about fair! Fair would have been you telling me you loved her from day one, before we even started dating! Fair would have been breaking up with me after our third date! Not seven months, Santana. Seven months!"

"I know. I know, and I'm sorry. I thought I could get over her, I honestly thought I could. I thought I could love you."

"All those times you told me you did. Were you lying?" Dani asks.

"I… I don't know," you tell her, and god, you wish you could just go to bed. "I loved spending time with you, I loved laughing with you, I loved things about us. But I don't think I loved you. So, maybe I did lie."

"I didn't," she says, with conviction. "I didn't lie, and I'm not lying now. Why can't we just try one more time, baby?"

You see the pain in her eyes, and you feel awful for doing this to her but your heart just doesn't lie with her. "There's no point, Dani. It's always going to be her."

"You could learn to forget her. You could! I could help you, we could get you over her together," Dani's tone turns to begging. "Just please give me one more chance." She's crying now.

You know what it feels like to be told no by the girl you love. "No," you say, firmly. "I'm in love with Brittany. Dani, I'm going to go to bed now because you're drunk and you need to sleep."

"I'm not-" she begins to protest.

"You are. I'll get you a blanket and you can sleep here. I'm not making you go home right now." You look at the clock. "God, Dani, it's half four in the morning. Just… get some sleep, and when you wake up in the morning you can get your stuff and go."

"I don't want to say goodbye to you," she cries. You know she's given up. She's accepted it.

"We all have to do things we don't want to do sometimes," you tell her. She breaks into a new round of sobbing, and you walk away. It's all you can do really, you can't attach yourself to her or she'll get the wrong idea. She has to let you go.

As you lie in bed, you can still hear her quietly crying on your sofa. You lie awake, not listening to her cry so much as you want to make sure she doesn't do something stupid like trash your apartment in the middle of the night. After about ten minutes the crying quietens until, a few minutes later, there's silence. You know she's fallen asleep, and you allow yourself to do the same.

//

It doesn't feel like you've even slept at all when your alarm goes off four hours later. You groan as you roll over to hit it off. Then you remember that your ex-girlfriend is sleeping on your couch. You groan even louder.

The blanket that was draped over her the night before now lies abandoned on the ground beside the sofa, you can see it from your room. You get up to see if she's still even there. When you get to the door of your room you can see that she is, and by the looks of things she has no intention of waking up any time soon. You take advantage of the fact, and start to pack up all of Dani's things that had somehow taken up residence in your apartment. It's weird that you don't even remember half of these things being brought over, but somehow they've ended up here.

Twenty minutes later, you have a bag of clothes, and a box of odds and ends - books, DVDs, make-up - ready for Dani to take when she wakes up. You decide not to wake her. Being hungover is bad enough without being woken up four hours after you've stopped drinking.

You make a cup of coffee to try to wake yourself up enough to face this day, and the inevitable drama that's going to happen when Dani wakes, and sobers, up. She must hear you in the kitchen because she stirs and sits up, rubbing her eyes, confused.

"How did I…?" she asks, looking around.

"You turned up at my door at four a.m.," you tell her. "You were a mess, I didn't want to send you home."

She looks down at her clothes, noting the state they're in. "I'm sorry," she says quietly. "I didn't mean to. I'm just… It's just hard, Santana."

You decide she could use a cup of coffee too, so you pour a second. "I know. But it's for the best," you tell her, taking her the coffee. She mutters a quiet thanks. "This was inevitable. It was always going to happen. Even if Britt didn't want to get back together, it would always have been her. I was just trying to convince myself it wasn't so I could move on."

"I think I might be like that for a while," Dani admits. "With you."

You give her a sad smile. "In this great big world, Dani, I am not the be all and end all of your relationships. There's a girl out there somewhere who's gonna love you more than you can even imagine right now. She's gonna be everything you could ever want, and more after that. Trust me, you'll find her. You're hot property in the lesbian market," you joke. "Look at you! You're not gonna be single for long."

Reluctantly, she gives you a laugh. "I guess you're right," she says, taking a sip of coffee. "I am pretty hot."

"You'll be okay."

"We can be friends, right?" she asks, timidly. "I mean, I still wanna know what's happening in your life, even if I'm not really a part of it anymore."

"I'd like that," you tell her. "I don't have many decent friends in New York. We'll give each other space for a while and then see if the friends thing can work."

"I hope it will," Dani says, with a smile. She drinks the rest of her coffee and gets up off the sofa. "I guess I'll pack my stuff up and go."

"It's all ready for you, beside the door." She looks slightly hurt. "I just didn't want you to have to do it yourself with a hangover."

She smiles. "My head is pretty sore." She lifts the box and grabs the bag with her other hand. "Little help with the door?"

You open it for her, and you're grateful that her arms are full with her stuff so you don't have to awkwardly hug her. "Goodbye, Santana," she says with finality.

"Bye, Dani," you reply. There's a split second where Dani just smiles at you and then she makes her way out of your building. She doesn't look back.

//

Twenty minutes later, you're seriously considering going back to bed for a few hours when the same metallic knocking comes from your door. You reluctantly pull yourself away from the TV, sighing the whole way to the door. You pull it open without even as much as a smile.

"Hi," is the first thing you hear, and your whole body wakes up. You understand what she meant in the choir room when she kissed you.

"Britt!" you exclaim, rushing forward to wrap your arms around her, and kiss her. "What are you doing here?! You're supposed to be at MIT!"

She looks at you proudly. "I quit."

"You.. what?! Britt, you quit MIT?!" You can't believe it.

"It wasn't good for me. It wasn't what I wanted," she tells you. "Or what I needed."

You're so happy to see her, you just kiss her again instead of speaking.

"Not that I don't love all this attention you're showering me with," she says against your lips."But would it be possible for us to do this inside?" Brittany asks. "I feel like the neighbours are gonna spy on us."

You pull away, laughing. "I'm just happy to see you," you defend. "Let me get your bag."

//

Once she's inside you realise she hasn't been to your apartment before. You've lived here nearly a year and this is the first time she's been here. It blows your mind a little.

"Want a tour?" you ask her, noticing her looking around.

"It's cute," she says. "Very New York. But the tour can wait. I just want to be close to you for a while first."

Your heart melts. After this long you'd think you'd be immune to it, but it's like it affects you more each time. "Let's go to my room," you say, taking her hand. It's twenty steps from the door to your room, twenty five max, but you're not going to deny yourself holding her hand for even a second when you've spent a year trying to remember how it feels. From the way she looks at you, you can tell she feels the same.

You both climb onto the bed, and just like second nature, Brittany rests her head on your lap as you sit up against the headboard. Your fingers find her hair automatically and start playing with it unconsciously. "Britt, I can't believe you quit MIT!"

"I had no intentions of going back," she says, looking up at you. "Even before we came back to say goodbye to Mr. Schue for what feels like the millionth time, I had no intentions of going back. I kept up the work and kept up the front, just in case, but as soon as I saw you and you saw me - I mean, not like the others did, but when you properly saw me - I knew I couldn't go back. That was it."

"Don't tell me you left MIT for me, Britt," you say. You don't want to be responsible for her giving up something so huge.

"I did it for me," she reassures you. "It wasn't the place for me. They were acting like what I was doing was hard, when every day all I did was show up and work out these equations for no reason. It was pointless. Nothing mattered. It wasn't like McKinley where we had an assembly or regionals to perform in, or a cheer competition to work for. It was just numbers."

"That sounds awful."

"I thought it would get better, but it was just the same all the time. Nothing ever changed. Then you came back to Lima and it was like you'd plugged me back in after my batteries had gone flat. You recharged me."

You don't know what else to do than to lean down and kiss her forehead.

"I felt more alive in those few days in Lima than I did in months at MIT and that's when I knew I had to leave."

"But you told me yesterday you were going back," you remind her.

She smirks. "It wouldn't have been much of a surprise, me showing up here, if I'd told you I was coming, would it?"

You laugh. "Okay, I guess not."

Brittany suddenly looks more serious. "When I asked you if you wanted to get back together, I was terrified. I didn't know anything about your life here or your life with your girlfriend." She looks shy. "I'm sorry I kissed you while you were dating someone. You know how much I hate cheating."

"I know."

"But I'm not sorry for kissing you. I just… I needed to. I needed to remind myself of how it felt, how you felt." You know that feeling. It's why you held her hand earlier. It's why you're running your fingers through her hair now.

"I'm glad you did," you admit. "I was terrified, too. I was terrified that you'd moved on. I didn't know how you felt and that terrified me. I tried to get over you, I tried to encourage you to date because I wanted to do what was best for you if you'd already gotten over me. But deep down it was killing me thinking of you starting to date someone else."

Brittany looks you right in the eye and says, "How do you think I've felt for the past seven months?"

You know she doesn't mean it harshly. She doesn't mean it to make you feel guilty. She genuinely just wants you to know how she's felt while you were dating Dani. You give her a sad smile. "I guess I didn't think of it like that."

"I'd go on Facebook and you'd have uploaded more photos of both of you on a night out, or you'd check in at your apartment saying it was date night with a selfie of you both. Every time, I just kept thinking that could have been us. It would have been me with you if I hadn't have had to stay back an extra year in school."

You swallow to stop yourself from crying. "Hey, we can't think like that, not now. We can't look at the 'what ifs' in the past, we have to look at the 'what nows?'"

"Well then... what now?" Brittany asks you.

"I just want every day to be like this," you tell her sincerely. "Just like this. Just us. Together."

"You don't even know if I'm staying here," Brittany laughs. "What if I don't want to move to New York?" she says, more seriously.

You panic. Have you been moving too quickly? After all, you both said you needed to discuss things before you got back together properly. And here you are basically asking her to marry you before you're even properly together again. You still haven't answered, but Brittany's laughter breaks the silence.

"I do, though," she says. "Want to move to New York." You relax slightly. "If that's okay?" And you feel like you need to tell her that she doesn't need your permission to move to the city. The city is big enough for both of you. But you know she's asking if she can move in with you. And you don't know if you can say yes - even though you want to - because, at the end of the day, this apartment is Kurt's, too.

"I'd love you to," you admit. "But we need to run it past Kurt first." You stroke your fingers along the side of her cheek. "I have no idea where he is right now, he didn't come home last night. But when he does, I'll talk it over with him and explain to him why it's a totally wonderful idea."

"Really?" She looks at you like she doesn't want to believe it could happen, just in case it doesn't.

"Really."

She taps her lips with her fingers motioning for you to kiss her. You laugh and oblige. "We're not doing very well at this 'discussion before things get serious' thing, are we?" you say.

"But we're discussing now. And I think we're doing a really good job. Usually by now you'd have, like, one item of clothing left on. If any."

You can't help but laugh at how accurate that is. "If any," you echo with a wink. "I think we should have tha talk now though, somewhere less… distracting."

"You mean, somewhere where I'm not lying in your lap."

"That's exactly what I mean," you giggle. "C'mon, up!" you say, moving your legs to force Brittany to move. "Sofa."

"Can we eat first? I'm starving."

And as you get up off your bed to make your way to the kitchen, you laugh to yourself and shake your head, because it doesn't matter how many things change, or how much times passes, Brittany is always going to be Brittany, and you're always going to love her with everything you have.


	5. Rekindle

The entire time you’re eating, you still can’t quite believe that Brittany is now sitting on your couch. Less than two hours ago, your hungover ex-girlfriend was lying there and now… well now, the love of your life is sitting in that exact same spot eating the last of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 

“So… how do we go about this?” you ask shyly. You don’t really know why you feel so nervous around Brittany. After all, it’s Brittany.

“Well you said you had some things you wanted to clear up first,” she reminds you. “So why don’t you just let me know what your insecurities are and we’ll address them.”

That’s a lot easier said than done, you think. But you take a deep breath and start. “I’m scared that you still hate me for breaking up with you when I went to college.” You can’t believe you just said that. “And I’m scared that you’ll start to hate me for it again if we start dating again and we both realise that we wasted time not dating for nothing.”

Brittany’s eyes soften and look at you with nothing but love. “Santana, I never hated you for that. Never. And I couldn’t ever.”

“But I ruined what we had for no reason at all! I panicked and messed things up!”

“You didn’t ruin anything. At the time I didn’t really get why you were breaking up with me - I still don’t really understand why - but I never hated you. I was just really, really sad. All I knew was that you didn’t want to be with me anymore and I was back to square one, being the kid who has to repeat a year while you were off making a life for yourself.”

“You think I didn’t want to be with you?” you ask her, quietly.

She chuckles nervously. “Well, I mean you did break up with me.”

“No, no, no,” you tell her, and you move from the seat where you’ve been sitting over to the couch so you can be closer to her. “I’ve always wanted to be with you, from the day I met you and every moment after. I didn’t break up with you because I didn’t want to be with you! Britt, I broke up with you because I couldn’t take not being near you, not being able to talk to you every day, not being able to kiss you when you were sad, or wake up next to you in the morning. I couldn’t take it. I broke up with you because I wanted to be with you so much that it was killing me. And I think, if we’re being honest, you felt the same way.”

Brittany smiles. “Nothing was the same when you left. It was like… everything was black and white when it used to be in color. Every day in school I was waiting for you to walk into the choir room or come into class but you never did. Everything reminded me of you. There wasn’t anywhere I could go that didn’t hold memories. Even the quiet places… we made them our own,” Brittany says with a smirk. You remember how you’d find every janitor’s closet, every unused bathroom, every space under the bleachers and you’d find yourself pressed up against a wall with Brittany’s fingers working miracles underneath your skirt. 

“Yeah, we really owned the place, didn’t we?” You both laugh. “Britt, I just don’t want you to hate me for wasting time.”

“I don’t think we wasted time,” she tells you. “Sure, we could have dated for a few extra months, but if we had would we have had the experiences we’ve had? Would I have went to MIT? Would you have auditioned for Funny Girl? I mean, I’d love to have spent those months with you, but I think it’s actually done us good. It’s given us time to find our own identities.” You have no idea how she manages to be so concise and so smart, but she always surprises you. “Even though I kind of lost my identity for a while… I think I had to to find myself.” 

“I’m glad you found your way back,” you tell her. 

“It’s hard to be lost when you’re home,” she replies, and you can feel yourself melt.

“Good to know. So, we’re agreed that the break up was dumb at the time but was probably for the best in the long run? And you’re not going to hate me?” you ask.

Brittany laughs. “Santana, how many times do I have to tell you that I’m not going to hate you! I love you… I think that’s as far away as you can get from hating someone.”

“Probably,” you say with a smile.

“It’s my turn now to bring up an insecurity,” Brittany says, and she does look slightly scared. “You’re not still in love with Dani, are you? I mean, you only broke up, like, yesterday.”

“I can’t still be in love with someone I was never in love with,” you tell her, and she looks shocked.

“But-” 

“I love her, yeah. But in the same way I love Kurt or Sam or Quinn.” 

“Oh, Quinn,” Brittany says when you mention her name. She’s trying to keep emotion out of her voice but years of reading her tells you that she’s slightly annoyed. “That too. You slept with her?”

Just like someone turned on the heating in the apartment to full, you can feel yourself getting hotter by the second. This just got awkward. 

“Yeah,” you admit. You never thought you’d be having this conversation with Brittany. Partly because you were always convinced Quinn was straight enough that you’d never get with her, and partly because, at the time, you honestly thought Brittany was going to become a person who stayed in your past. “It was after we broke up. I was still desperately trying to work out what to do with my life and how to move on from you, and she was there. We got drunk and I think she was lonely. I don’t know. It just happened. One minute we were laughing out in the corridor, and then the next we were in the hotel room and-”

“Okay, I get it,” Brittany interrupts. “Was she…” Brittany laughs. “God, I can’t believe I’m asking this. Was she… good?”

You swallow. “She was… looking for a release, I guess. She didn’t want the romance or the foreplay, she just wanted to get off. And it was her first time with a girl, so she didn’t really know what to do.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Brittany tells you, and you look her in the eye. You can tell this conversation is a little uncomfortable for her but there’s something in her eyes that tells you that she’s enjoying watching you struggle. 

“For it being her first time, she was better than I expected. But as far as sex with girls goes, she’s probably the worst I’ve had.”

That makes Brittany look happier, and also a little proud. You guess it’s because Quinn’s always been the best at everything and now Brittany’s finally found something that she’s the worst at. “And Dani?” 

“Britt, do you really want to-”

“How was she?” Brittany asks again, without hesitation. She’s smiling, and you can tell that the mood is less tense now. 

You guess you have to be honest. “Experienced,” you laugh. “Sometimes I almost felt like a virgin again.”

Brittany’s eyes widen in interest. “She teach you anything we can try?” she asks with a smirk, and the question makes your stomach do flips. 

“The only thing she introduced me to that we hadn’t tried was… accessorising. If you catch my drift.”

Brittany’s blue eyes darken and she looks at you like prey. “Interesting. You’ll have to show me what you’ve learned sometime…” she says, her voice heavy with lust. She lets the thought hang in the air and watches as you take the time to process it. It takes all your willpower not to take her right there and then on your couch. 

“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” you tease. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.” 

“Don’t keep me waiting too long though,” Brittany says instantly. God, you’ve missed her so much. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” you say, and immediately push yourself forward to kiss her. Your hands finding her cheeks, bringing her closer to you. As soon as your lips touch it ignites something deep within you that you haven’t felt for such a long time. When Brittany kissed you in Ohio, you knew that’s all it was going to be - a kiss - but now, here in your apartment, this could go anywhere. And the thought of that makes your stomach flip.

Brittany moans at the contact and she places her hands around your back pulling you closer. You hardly notice it happening, but a few seconds later, Brittany has repositioned so she’s lying across the couch and you’re on top of her. It makes you pause for a second, so you pull out of the kiss. 

“Too much?” you ask, even though you know it’s not. “It’s not too fast? We were meant to talk abo-”

“Shut up and keep kissing me,” Brittany says and pulls you back down to kiss her. You automatically obey and kiss her harder than before. This is it. All or nothing. 

Brittany takes the lead and reaches for the bottom of your dress, pulling it up over your head. You move yourself to make it easier for her, and in a few seconds you feel the cold air of the apartment hit your skin. You only notice it for moment before you’re distracted by the way Brittany’s eyes widen at the sight of you in your matching black lacy underwear. Being on top of her like this accentuates your boobs so Brittany can’t take her eyes off them. 

“God, I missed this,” she whispers with lust in her voice. She runs her hands along your back from your bra right down to the top of your underwear and you shiver at her touch. She teases you by playing with the elastic on your panties, dipping her fingers underneath slightly every few seconds. 

“You… you have far too many clothes on,” you tell her, and she doesn’t hesitate to quickly pull off her own t-shirt. You thank every god you know of that she decided not to wear a bra. 

“Better?” she asks.

You place your thumbs under the waistband of her sweats, and start pulling them down. “It will be when I get these off you,” you tell her, watching as her legs come into view. You discard her sweats on the floor beside you and your breath hitches at the feeling of skin on skin for the first time in what feels like forever. 

 

You focus your attention on Brittany’s neck, kissing down over her chest and pausing at her breasts. You pay attention to each one in turn, sucking on her nipple softly at first and then harder when she begins to moan in pleasure. Her body writhes underneath yours and it makes the fire inside you burn brighter. 

“Santana,” she moans. “Santana, I need-”

You know what she needs. It’s the same thing that you need right now. The only reason you’re holding off is because you didn’t want to just jump right in. But if Brittany wants you to jump right in, then you’re going to. 

“I love you,” you breathe out against her skin as you move your kisses lower, taking off her panties at the same time.

“I love you, too,” Brittany gasps when you leave her completely naked. You’re almost where you want to be when-

You swear you’d put your goddamn phone on silent but here it is ringing full volume right when you’re about to do something you thought you’d never get to do again. 

“Fuck!” you exclaim, trying not to let it distract you. You keep going but Brittany seems more distracted than you. “It’ll ring off in a second,” you tell her, kissing her stomach and bringing your hands down her sides to find her ass. 

A few seconds later, the apartment is silent again, apart from Brittany’s breathing which is becoming slightly more shallow the lower you go on her body. 

You regain composure and go lower, until you’re inches from where you need to be when your phone rings again. 

“Maybe you should answer it,” Brittany says, reluctantly. 

“After all this time and I can’t even go down on you in fucking peace,” you exclaim.

Brittany laughs. “Such a charmer.” 

“I’m going to kill whoever this is!” you sigh, reluctantly reaching over to pick up the phone. You don’t know the number. “Yeah,” you say when you answer instead of hello. 

“Santana,” you recognise the voice. 

“Rachel, I’m kind of in the middle of something here so make it quick. And,” you look at the number she’s calling from in confusion, “Where the hell are you calling from?”

“Santana,” she says again, and you listen to her voice this time. She sounds… broken. “Santana, it’s Kurt. He’s… he’s in the hospital.”


End file.
